CANTON, Ohio The Timken Co. today announced it has fundamentally redesigned its engineering, product management and business systems teams, bringing together talent and tools in a new way to drive development of its product lines and advance its technical capabilities to better meet customer needs.

“We’ve been the tapered roller bearing experts since our founding,” said Richard Kyle, president and CEO of The Timken Co. “Over the past decade, we’ve leveraged that expertise to successfully expand into other types of bearings. Today, we’re announcing a major move taking us more deeply and more broadly into our targeted market space, a move intended to firmly position us among our customers as a full-line leader in industrial bearings and power transmission products and services.”

Kyle said that the company is committing $60 million to its DeltaX Initiative, a multi-year investment designed to dramatically improve the company’s concept-to-commercialization efforts. “Through DeltaX, we’re integrating Timken talent, technology and tools in a way that will allow us to be even more agile and competitive,” he said. “From design to delivery, a more product-focused infrastructure, supported with new customer-facing systems, will replace our traditional functional structure. We believe this new, more collaborative design  the first step in our initiative  will allow us to execute even better on our strategy to grow, delivering to the marketplace much faster and more efficiently those products that customers value.”

As part of the investment, three senior-level product line executives and a new research and development leader have been appointed. Newly appointed Timken veterans will drive three focused product growth streams, strategically aligning product management, development and design with production operations. The three product growth streams and the respective product line executives at the heart of the DeltaX Initiative are:
* Tapered Roller Bearings, led by Douglas H. Smith;
* Industrial Bearings, which includes the broader range of spherical, cylindrical, thrust and large diameter tapered bearings, led by Amanda Montgomery; and
* Power Transmission and Engineering Systems, focusing on the expanded portfolio of housed units, ball bearings, chain, couplings and related products, including seals, lubrication and monitoring equipment, led by Hans Landin.

Research and Development will be driven by Dr. Stephen Johnson, who will lead a team focused on process and product technology, materials, prototypes, metrology and testing. The R&D group will support the product line leaders with technology fundamentals and services.

“Doug, Amanda, Hans and Steve have extensive knowledge of our products and the marketplace, and their proven ability to foster change and drive results that create value make them particularly well-suited for these new roles,” said Christopher Coughlin, group president, who set the project in motion several months ago and to whom the product line executives will report. “We’re organizing for speed and focus and expect DeltaX to ensure we work on and invest in what matters most to our customers and ultimately to our shareholders.”

Timken says this new configuration will change the way nearly 400 employees work as well as how they interface with colleagues and customers, impacting teams located at the new world headquarters in North Canton, Ohio, and the company’s other three key engineering centers in China, India and Romania.

Coughlin noted that the company expects to increase the number of new products and features it introduces to the market by approximately 30 percent, and that nearly 200 engineers and related technical resources will be hired over the next three years to help fuel development of newly designed products and processes.